In 2010, the Little Ninja and I both worked hard to help her earn her black belt. After we succeeded at that, 2011 was really where I focused on myself so I could do what was required to earn my own black belt. That was a fabulous experience, but after getting my black belt confirmed in December, I now found myself without a short term goal. Second degree black belt is a long way away, so I needed to look for something more immediate.

A few weeks back, I came up with the idea of going to the ATA Nationals Tournament. I’ve competed in some smaller tournaments, but nothing like this. This is a big tournament, and I’ll have to compete in a higher division now than I have in the past — since I have my black belt now. I talked to the Little Ninja about it and she loved the idea of taking a trip to Vegas with her dad. So, we have 12 weeks from the start of the year to get ready. We just finished the first week of training.

The Little Ninja is planning to compete in traditional forms, traditional weapons (with a Bo Staff form) and XMA Weapons (with her Kamas). For her, I’m really only worried about getting her to put in the training hours on technique. If she does just that, she’ll do great. For my own training, I need to be more aggressive.

I’m planning to compete in Traditional Forms, Traditional Weapons and Taekwondo Sparring. I’ve done all these events at small tournaments before, but I’m also planning to push myself. The ATA has been introducing a new Integrated Martial Arts System (IMS) that uses TKD’s striking and adds submissions and takedowns. This is really MMA fighting (with more restrictions and safety gear than the UFC). I’m planning to train to compete in IMS at nationals. For this I need to up my game a lot!

I’ve started by putting together a format to track my progress over the 12 weeks leading up to the tournament. I just finished week 1, and I’m going to try to peak my training at week 11 (a week prior to the actual tourney). Here’s what I’m tracking:

Push ups – I can do these anywhere and I’m setting a goal to work up to at least doing 1,000 a week

Adherence to my Fighter’s Diet program (I mark down each cheat meal so I don’t have too many)

Weight and body fat percentage. I don’t really want to loose weight, but instead want to drive up my muscle mass without also gaining fat. I’ve never tried to actually gain weight before so this will be new!

Here are my entries for this week. I’ll be posting these once a week to help keep me honest. I appreciate any feedback, suggestions or encouragement. If you’re reading this then consider yourself one of my virtual training partners! I appreciate your help!

So, this week I trained just over 1 hour per day (including all seven days of the week), did 400 pushups (not counting any from my regular martial arts classes), and had one cheat meal (the fries my friend ordered looked just too good!). Oover the course of the week I weighed in on average at 143.5 lbs with 14.8% body fat (calculated using my fancy new scale). Let’s see how next week compares!